Trump Names Interim Consumer Agency Head, Likely Sparking Showdown

[Swordsmyth]

U.S. President Donald Trump has designated White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until a permanent director is nominated and confirmed, the White House said on Friday. The action came hours after Richard Cordray submitted his formal resignation and named a deputy director as his replacement, setting the stage for a political and legal battle over the regulator's leadership.

"The president looks forward to seeing Director Mulvaney take a common sense approach to leading the CFPB’s dedicated staff, an approach that will empower consumers to make their own financial decisions and facilitate investment in our communities," the White House said in its statement.

Democratic lawmakers are eager to preserve the regulator for as long as possible while Republicans want to put in place new leadership to chart a drastically different course.


The succession plan has never been tested, with Cordray as its first and only full-time director.

Cordray had previously announced plans to resign by the end of November. In a statement to staff, he said that Leandra English, the CFPB's chief of staff, had been named deputy director and would take over as acting director of the agency upon his exit.


However, the White House had already said it planned to name its own interim leadership at the regulator.


There are competing theories in Washington as to who can name Cordray's replacement. Democrats point to language in the Dodd-Frank law that created the CFPB, stipulating the deputy director replaces the director when he or she leaves.

But others say a separate law governing federal vacancies gives Trump power to name someone elsewhere in the administration to that role temporarily, while the White House identifies a full-time nominee who would be confirmed by the Senate.


More at: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2017-11-24/cordray-resigns-from-us-consumer-agency-triggers-political-showdown

[Zippyjuan]

Related: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?517096-In-final-act-Cordray-blocks-Trump-from-naming-his-successor-at-consumer-protection-bureau

[specsaregood]

As an executive branch employee, I don't see any reason that Trump couldn't just fire the deputy director/acting director leaving the spot open for his own appointment.

[spudea]

Trump wins again.

[spudea]

Related: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?517096-In-final-act-Cordray-blocks-Trump-from-naming-his-successor-at-consumer-protection-bureau

showdown is over because it was fake to begin with:


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top lawyer for the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has concluded that President Donald Trump has the authority to name its acting director, three sources familiar with the matter said on Sunday, rejecting an effort by her former boss at the agency to name his immediate successor.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cfpb-memo/exclusive-u-s-consumer-finance-agency-lawyer-sides-with-trump-over-succession-sources-idUSKBN1DR05A

[Swordsmyth]

showdown is over because it was fake to begin with:



https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cfpb-memo/exclusive-u-s-consumer-finance-agency-lawyer-sides-with-trump-over-succession-sources-idUSKBN1DR05A

Trumped.

[angelatc]

As an executive branch employee, I don't see any reason that Trump couldn't just fire the deputy director/acting director leaving the spot open for his own appointment.

Because they set this up specifically to be devoid of Congressional oversight to keep it away from downsizers.

[Swordsmyth]

showdown is over because it was fake to begin with:



https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cfpb-memo/exclusive-u-s-consumer-finance-agency-lawyer-sides-with-trump-over-succession-sources-idUSKBN1DR05A

That should make things interesting in court:

The deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued the Trump administration on Sunday (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4310647-English-Complaint-CFPB.html#document/p1) to block the president’s appointment of Mick Mulvaney as interim director of the agency.
Leandra English filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against President Donald Trump and Mulvaney, who currently serves as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. English was appointed deputy director of the CFPB on Friday after the agency’s director, Richard Cordray, stepped down, (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/us/politics/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-cordray-leader-trump-mulvaney.html) and says her role mandates she serve as acting director until Congress appoints Cordray’s replacement.
“As the rightful acting director of the Bureau, Ms. English brings this action against President Trump and Mr. Mulvaney seeking a declaratory judgment and, on an emergency basis, a temporary restraining order to prevent the defendants from appointing, causing the appointment of, recognizing the appointment of, or acting on the appointment of an acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau via any mechanism other than that provided for [by the law],” the suit reads.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/top-cfpb-official-sues-trump-034737173.html

[spudea]

That should make things interesting in court:



If you are a security guard at that office who would you listen to? The agency top lawyer and the DOJ, or a disgruntled employee that could be fired at any second.

[oyarde]

I would fire them all .

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/politics/cfpb-leandra-english-mulvaney.html


2 Bosses Show Up to Lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

WASHINGTON — On Monday, Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, brought in doughnuts. Around the same time, Leandra English, the agency’s other acting director, sent an all-staff email thanking employees for their service.

Awkward.

And so it goes in a capital city defined by its dysfunction, at an agency where two public servants, one a holdover from the Obama administration and another a rushed temporary appointee by President Trump, are messily and publicly vying to lead a controversial agency under constant political assault by Republicans. Ties between the Trump White House and the federal government’s top consumer financial watchdog agency were so frayed by the end of Thanksgiving weekend that hundreds of confused employees came to work not knowing who their director would be.

“I knew on Friday who my boss was,” an employee for the agency, who only gave his first name, Ella, because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said as he approached the bureau. “But thanks to this idiot, I don’t know.”

(He did not clarify which idiot.)

The bureaucratic roller coaster began with the abrupt departure on Friday of Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee who helped the agency aggressively expand its powers to punish rule-breaking companies. He named Ms. English as his acting deputy director and presumed acting director. The White House responded forcefully by saying Mr. Mulvaney, currently the director of the Office of Management and Budget, would be the one in control until Mr. Trump decided on a permanent successor, whose confirmation could take months.

On Sunday evening, Ms. English filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump in an attempt to block him from appointing Mr. Mulvaney, who is named in the lawsuit as “claiming to be acting director” of the agency.

As confusion reigned, Ms. English headed to Capitol Hill to meet with at least four lawmakers about her plans. Among those lawmakers: Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat of Massachusetts who proposed the bureau and helped set it up, according to a spokeswoman for Ms. Warren.

Mr. Mulvaney, for his part, dodged questions from consumer finance advocates as he carried in breakfast for at least a few employees on the 1,600-person payroll. There was no public trace of Ms. English, whose tenure as a low-profile public servant abruptly ended as she began to fight on behalf of the agency she helped found in 2011. Mr. Mulvaney has been openly critical of the agency, once calling it a “joke” and a “wonderful example of how a bureaucracy will function if it has no accountability to anybody.”

The two dueling directors embody widely differing visions regarding the future of the agency, which was established under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and adopted an aggressive agenda under the Obama administration, targeting financial companies for practices that it considers unfair or abusive. Those actions have resulted in nearly 30 million consumers collecting almost $12 billion in refunds and canceled debts.

Barney Frank, a former representative from Massachusetts who was a co-sponsor of the Dodd-Frank Act, said that the law intended for the acting director to step into any vacancy, to protect the agency from political influence.

“Bank regulation is a very sensitive business,” Mr. Frank said in an interview on Monday. “You don’t want to expose the agency doing it to the normal political interference, which is what we were afraid of.”





More at link.

[Swordsmyth]

Trump Wins: Judge Denies Obama Holdover's Suit Against Mulvaney Running CFPBhttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-28/trump-wins-judge-denies-obama-holdovers-suit-against-mulvaney-running-cfpb



Trumped.